Saturday, March 27, 2010

Don't worry; be happy.

Tyrants don't ever back off because you ask them to; they only back off when their victims resist. I don't mean with votes, or whiny letters, or insistent phone calls; I mean with disobedience. And nationalizing a huge chunk of the economy, basically socializing all health care, might just make a few more people consider such a thing.

A similar, but less significant, experiment will be the census. And I'm happy to see that even some well-known folk (like Judge Napolitano and Walter Williams) are openly advocating non-compliance. The only thing that actually slows down tyranny is when people are ANTI-politically active--when instead of asking for freedom, they exercise their freedom "illegally" (i.e., without the permission of the tyrants). And this census will be a good measure of whether the American people have started to re-grow spines. Because the threatened penalty is relatively small (a fine, no prison time), and the government demands are so patently idiotic, intrusive, and pointless--not to mention unconstitutional--even "normal" people might be able to contemplate refusal to obey. When they open their mail, look at the form, and think, "Do they think I have nothing better to do than this?," we might actually see Americans acting like they believe in freedom, by flinging the stupid thing in the trash.

The bigger test will be whether folks resist Obama's Commie-Care. When things get really bad--and they will--and people's lives start depending upon it, when will people start to think that maybe they should just find a doctor who will "illegally" accept cash (or gold or silver) in exchange for "illegally" providing health care? When will the people start to build an extensive black market in medicine? In other words, when will people start acting like they have an unalienable right to be free, instead of wasting their time asking the tyrants to "legalize" freedom (which has never happened in the history of the world, and never will)?

The biggest obstacle to this is not fear of punishment. Yes, the tyrants like to hurt people who disobey their stupid commands, but that is not the primary problem. After all, the victims of Obama's Commie-Care will outnumber its administrators two-thousand-to-one. No, the biggest obstacle is the deeply ingrained lunacy that tells people that they have an obligation to obey whatever stupid commands the politicians "legislate." Due to their lifelong indoctrination -- by parents, schools, and "government” -- most people feel bad about disobeying a perceived "authority," even when the commands are idiotic, or downright evil.

I've been saying for years that politicians don't mind protests, movements, elections, petitions, demonstrations, or any other "political action," except when the legitimacy of their rule is questioned. In other words, as long as the "national discussion" consists of the masses asking their masters in "government" for freedom, the masters are in no trouble. When the masses stop asking, and start disobeying, that is when the politicians are doomed. And we are seeing more signs of that now. And as a result, the desperate American tyrants are trying to paint everyone who questions "government" as a terrorist--a tactic which is already back-firing.

Most people realize that the politicians do whatever they want, don't care what we think or what we want, and are serving their "special interest" buddies, not the public. This is important, because the myth of "government by consent" is crucial to the games played by the control freaks. If people stop falling for the propaganda about the crooks "representing" us, then the legitimacy of the system, in the eyes of its victims, collapses. And when that falls, the tyrants are finished.

It is utterly impossible to control, by brute force alone, 300,000,000 people. Only by convincing the masses that they should be controlled, and that they have an obligation to obey "government," can tyrants succeed. The thieves who work for the IRS are outnumbered a thousand-to-one by their victims. If most people didn't believe the bunk about how we have some duty to keep handing politicians as much money as they want, the "tax" system would crumble overnight.

So don't be bummed out that Obama's Commie-Care is becoming a reality. It's a good thing, precisely because it's so bad. With any luck, the Washington crooks will try to nationalize all industry, swipe all property, and openly control everyone and everything. Because what matters is not how people vote, or how much they complain--what matters is whether they do as they're told, or whether they disobey those who pretend to have the right to rule us all. For all the talk about "land of the free," history shows that Americans will do as they're told unless and until things get really bad. So be thankful that the U.S. tyrants are getting impatient and desperate, and stampeding toward totalitarianism as fast as they can.

5 comments:

Very interesting. I just finished reading "The Tipping Point" by Malcome Gladwell, and while it was a fairly boring book there was one interesting part about obedience. There was an experiment that they reviewed that tested the extent of how obedient people would be under certain conditions even to the point of causing another person physical harm. The results were astounding. Almost all the people who participated were obedient, even if hesitant. I think this says a lot about us and our humanity, and or culture. I think it shows how dangerously obedient we are and how naive we can be. We are in trouble, that's for sure. If people would stand up and be disobedient maybe we would have a chance in this fight, but for some reason I find myself feeling like I am surrounded by a lot of people, in my generation, that have been raised to not have a backbone... I think we are on our way to being just a bunch of mindless cows in a herd, waiting and willing to be herded. I guess I have a scary future to look forward to.

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A Creed

Politics was defined in an essay by the incomparable Lewis Lapham, at the time managing editor of Harper's magazine. He said, Politics is the continuous argument over who gets to do what to whom, for how long, and against what degree of dissent. It has yet to be said better.